Why You Shouldn't Ignore Text Replies

People use Call-Em-All to deliver text messages to their contact groups. In some cases, these messages are merely notifications or alerts and don't require a reply. Often, messages are designed to engage contacts. It's no secret that text messages have a high response rate, but what is really shocking is how many replies to the original message go unread. Let's take a more in-depth look at this and explore why you shouldn't ignore responses to your mass text.

Raise your hand if you see a voicemail on your phone at work and think, “Yep, I’ll leave that there without listening to it.” There are probably two reasons why nobody reading this rose their hands.

You wouldn’t leave a voicemail unread. It could be a significant message, like a person telling you they want to take that open job you’re offering, a co-worker who needs to discuss an issue, or someone you're just waiting to hear back from.Plus, raising your hand while sitting in your office alone would be a little weird.

This probably isn't new information for anyone. I bring it up, however, because each day our team sees Call-Em-All customers who ignore text replies entirely. In fact we have over 500,000 unread text replies in our system. Whether intentionally done or not, the end result is the same:

You're probably missing out on information that is just as valuable as the important message you originally sent to the contact.

That’s why we always preach to our users to be on top of their text responses.

Bonus Tip: Be careful with the wording of your message. Always be clear about the action you want contacts to take. If you don't want a response, make sure your message is detailed enough to answer common questions - or don't ask a question when you don't intend to read the answer.

The most common thing we see are contacts replying back with additional questions. The account shown here had 722 unread replies. Many of them were contacts showing genuine interest in the position being offered.

Texting leads to conversations, which means you have an engaged contact. Don't waste that opportunity.

To see your text responses from within Call-Em-All, go to the Conversations tab at the top of your homepage (click here to learn about Conversations). There, you will see entire text threads of the contacts who responded to you, and you can even respond directly back to them.

Not convinced? I hear ya, you could have a million things going on in your day and adding one more just isn’t in the cards. But what if I told you that ignoring your text responses could cost you thousands of dollars?

That’s right, ignoring messages can cost you big time. How? Opt-outs.

Everyone knows your audience can respond with the word “stop” to opt out of your future messages. Our system will also review your inbound texts to make sure we’re auto opting out contacts who don’t want to receive text messages going forward (click here to read about Auto Opt-Outs), but what about those who respond telling you not to text them again and aren’t easy for our system to detect?

You and I can infer intent from a text message much better than any machine can, no matter how well we teach it. For this reason, if someone responded with “Cody got a new number, and I don't want your messages!” and our system misses the auto opt-out, and you keep texting them, you’re now sending unwanted text messages.

The fine per unwanted text is currently $500 per message. That’s how unread replies can get expensive.

So please, do both yourself and your audiences a favor. If you have unread text replies in Conversations, read ‘em. Plus, that's one less contact you'll have to pay to reach with your message. Who knows, you may be missing that next out-of-this-world job candidate, a volunteer who wants to help you, or angry recipient who shouldn’t be getting your messages in the first place.

Jonathan Melton is a member of the Customer Experience team at Call-Em-All, an automated calling and group texting company that provides solutions for small and medium sized businesses, large corporations, membership organizations, community groups, and individuals. Jonathan’s responsibility since joining the team in 2015 has been the education and on-boarding of new users. Jonathan is a graduate of the University of Texas at San Antonio.

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